Spain’s Restoration Era: Politics, Society, and Crisis
Electoral System and Turnismo
Elections were manipulated to ensure a majority for the governing party through the influence of local bosses (caciques), who controlled voters directly through pressure or various forms of vote-buying. If this failed, they resorted to electoral fraud (pucherazo), manipulating results by falsifying vote counts, swapping ballot boxes, and employing other fraudulent methods to ensure the government’s preferred candidate won. This system persisted for several reasons:
- Widespread public apathy towards the party system and elections.
- Economic backwardness, with the majority of the population primarily concerned with survival.
- Strong dependency relationships between peasants and the ruling oligarchies.
- High illiteracy rates among the population.
Despite its imperfections, the turnismo (peaceful rotation of power between the main parties) provided stability to Spanish political life.
Supporters and Opponents of the System
Cánovas’s system had a broad social base, including landowners, most of the bourgeoisie, and significant parts of the peasantry and urban proletariat. Support from the army and the Church was also crucial. The king was presented as a ‘soldier king,’ assuming army leadership, while Church and State were reconciled. With Catholicism reinstated as the official religion, the Church regained prestige and influence, especially in education. However, some clerical sectors remained uneasy about the allowance of freedom of worship.
Opposition Groups
Opposition to the system came from several groups:
- Carlism: The Third Carlist War ended with government victory, but Carlism persisted as a political force, opposing the liberal monarchy.
- Republicans: Sidelined from the political system, they faced several problems despite being a potentially major force:
- Fragmentation: Unification attempts failed until the Republican Union was formed in 1903.
- A complex social composition.
- Repression by Cánovas’s early governments.
- Working-Class Movement: Divided into two main trends:
- The socialist trend, led by Pablo Iglesias, consolidated with the founding of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the UGT (General Union of Workers).
- The anarchist trend, which founded its own union, the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), and later the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation). Anarchism also had a violent faction (‘propaganda by the deed’) responsible for attacks, including the assassination of Cánovas and bombings like the one at the Liceo de Barcelona.
- Catholic Social Action: Influenced by the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), which rejected class struggle but accepted private ownership and advocated for social justice. While not as deeply rooted in Spain as elsewhere, figures like Father Vicent founded Catholic Worker Circles in Levante and Catalonia.
Regionalism and Nationalism
These movements reacted against liberal centralism, defending distinct regional identities and languages:
- Catalan Nationalism: Rooted in the Renaixença, a 19th-century literary and cultural revival movement. During the Regency, conservative Catalan regionalists (later forming the Lliga Regionalista) gained political representation. Catalan demands for autonomy were articulated in the Bases de Manresa (1892).
- Basque Nationalism: Initiated by Sabino Arana, leading to the foundation of the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) in 1895. Initial ideas were radical: advocating for independence, defending the Basque language and perceived ‘race,’ and emphasizing strong Catholicism. These stances gradually moderated over time.
- Galician Nationalism: Emerged in a highly rural context (Rexurdimento and later Ruralismo), initially more cultural and regionalist than overtly nationalist. Key figures included Alfredo Brañas and later Alfonso Castelao.
- Andalusian Nationalism (Andalucismo): Its chief ideologist was Blas Infante. It focused more on addressing deep-seated social problems and asserting regional identity than on separatism.
Conclusion: The Regency and the Crisis of ’98
Alfonso XII died in 1885 and was succeeded by his pregnant wife, Maria Christina of Austria, who served as regent for their posthumously born son, Alfonso XIII. Cánovas and Sagasta signed the Pact of Pardo to ensure the stability of the monarchy and the turnismo system during the regency. However, this period witnessed growing social tensions, the rise of opposition movements, and culminated in the ‘Crisis of ’98’—the national trauma following Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War and the loss of its last major colonies (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines). This marked a turning point, signaling the beginning of the Restoration system’s decline.